


the show can't go on

by AnnaofAza



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Pining, Seemingly unrequited love, reality ensues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 08:38:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6322534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnaofAza/pseuds/AnnaofAza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Darling, darling, oh, turn the lights back on now / Watching, watching, as the credits all roll down."</p><p>For Taron, it isn't that kind of movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the show can't go on

* * *

Taron’s stopped talking about Colin.

It’s been nearly six years since they first walked on that set together and nearly six months since they had an actual face-to-face conversation.

Taron still trolls the Internet when he’s feeling bored enough—when he has no lines to memorize or interviews to rehearse—and looks through photos from nearly a different lifetime ago. He sees himself grinning widely, ducking his head, rubbing his hand on Colin’s shoulders, or simply staring as the man beside him talks. There’s even a few videos that document it all—every gaze, every glance, every gape—and one that even showcases the many times of Taron mentioning Colin Firth.

 _Kingsman_ is over. It had been a surprisingly successful trilogy, and he owes Matthew Vaughn so, so much for giving him a chance and inadvertently launching him into the spotlight. Taron has even gotten to the stage where he has to actually turn down parts. He feels terrible and finicky and snobbish every time, but Taron doesn’t want to play just a cardboard character. He wants to inhabit their body, slip into the flesh and blood and bone and mind, lift his head and look in the mirror and see someone different. Someone who tells a story.

The critics laud him, heap praise over how dedicated and successful he is, and parade his him through articles and interviews that trumpet phrases like “rising star.”

But stars have to eventually die.

Some people miss “the old Taron.” The one who was so generous with his smiles and laughter. The one who smiled freely in public. The one who mentioned his mum and sister and mates and Colin Firth.

Privately, Taron thinks it all began when he took down his Twitter banner of his and Colin’s faces. It was from a photo shoot, and Taron recalls squirming on uncomfortably stiff seats and trying to make each other laugh, mostly with goofy antics and twisted facial expressions. He’d picked the funniest one, and kept those that didn’t make the cut, ones that make him look like the boy who lit up the room, but who only had eyes for what looked like an ordinary older man.

He’d been warned. His mum called it “an infatuation,” and his father called it “a crush that will pass.” But Taron had instead listened to his heart, and told Colin.

What had followed was a solemn “I know” and a horror-struck shock that stopped his heart. Worse was the silence: the horrible, awkward tension that had been caused solely by him.

Taron had then laughed it off, claiming drunkenness, and proceeded to pretend for the rest of the night that he was sloshed out of his mind, more than he really was. The next morning, waking up on Colin’s couch, Taron slipped away and prayed Colin was too much of a gentleman to mention it ever again.

Colin had been, and Taron had moved on.

A young Welsh boy from a small village with an absurdly-long name falling for an older London gentleman with a wife and kids: it wouldn’t have worked, and it was completely impossible, considering their jobs. Everything about them was and always will be in the spotlight, a performance that both will have to hide or acknowledge. Either way was perilous, and even if Colin did feel the same way, it wouldn’t have ended happily for either of them.

Sometimes, Taron misses that hopeful young man, but most of the time, he’s glad that he’s gone. 

Almost. 

**Author's Note:**

> Just to let you all know, this was one of the endings I wrote for ["The Colin Firth Effect."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5413802/chapters/12508430)


End file.
